[
    {
        "id": 208026,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1977",
        "page_number": 65,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "A JOURNEY TO YENAN 1946\n\n49\n\nit was mid-winter, the countryside around was bare, brown, and dusty, and many people wore white surgical masks to keep out the fine dust. The hillsides in Yenan and on the way there were all seriously eroded, and there was little sign of the spectacular reclamation work on terracing slopes and damming streams of later years, the result of which can be seen by today's visitors.\n\nOccasions in Yenan\n\nHaving unloaded our cargo, checked the manifests, and visited the hospital, we spent a day servicing the trucks. We were staying at the Guest House, a row of very comfortable caves with a terrace and a courtyard in front. We were in the middle of servicing, with petrol drums and wheels scattered around, ourselves under the trucks greasing and checking, when we were informed that Chairman Mao Tse-tung was coming to see us! The courtyard was rapidly tidied, overalls and dirt removed, and the party went to the ketang to wait. We then discovered that the Chairman had been at the Guest House for some time seeing someone else and had arrived unnoticed while we were under the trucks. We were all introduced and thanked for our assistance and help, to which I replied that this was part of our normal work and not something to earn especial thanks. The impression, which I recorded then, was of great confidence and quiet strength.\n\nTwo or three days later, we were invited to a performance of the well-known opera \"Ta Ming Fu\" (★1⁄2#) part of the \"Liang Shan P'o\" (b) series, which has a very suitable theme. We found ourselves sitting three rows behind the Chairman and other leading Party members, including Marshal Chu Te, all of whom enjoyed themselves as there was a strong cast with some excellent comic character performances. This was, of course, well before the growth of revolutionary opera.\n\nOn one evening, we were entertained by, I think, members of the Lu Hsun Academy of Art (or the Anti-Japanese Revolutionary University). There was a yang ke dance team with a performance extolling improved methods of pest control on crops, some songs, and then dancing for all, mostly folk dances but including some foxtrots and quicksteps played on er hu and pi pa. We were presented with a set of woodcuts by various artists working there, including Zhang Wan, Yan Han, Xia Feng, Gu Yuan, and Weng",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
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    {
        "id": 212827,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1992",
        "page_number": 136,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "121\n\nWe were in the meantime collecting personnel and stores for Kokang. The trip in the 15 cwt. lorry in and out of Kun-ming each day required a gallon and a half of petrol; we could only replace our small stock by purchases in the black market, at a cost of around £2 per gallon. Opportunely we found accommodation in the city; for myself I shared a house with the officer who was stationed in Kun-ming to distribute the supplies received by the R.A.F. 'plane which flew over the Hump once a week.\n\nThese few supplies had to be stretched to meet the needs of all the British establishments in China, the Embassy, the various Consulates, the British Military Mission in that far-away place, their Headquarters in Chungking, and various odd parties, such as the one to which I was attached. The R.A.F. officer in question was Australian; J.K. was one of the most unselfish persons I have ever met, was most helpful to all the different parties he had to try to please, and had an extraordinary talent for making friends, a talent of which I unblushingly took advantage. He had not been long in Kun-ming before he had more friends amongst the Chinese and Americans than any other British officer in the place.\n\nMeanwhile time continued to pass; a couple of months flew by, the end of the rains approached in Burma, and the British tried to make their plans. Then suddenly one morning I received information from the Headquarters of the Chinese Expeditionary Force that a mob of Kokang rebels, dissatisfied with the Myosa, had attacked him. He managed to escape with a broken leg, but his fourth son and a number of his followers were killed; he succeeded in making his way to Tetang in China, where he took refuge at the headquarters of the Chinese general commanding the division in that area. The report added that the Chinese had instructed the Myosa's brother, who happened to be at Tetang at the time, to proceed to Kokang to re-establish order, and sometime later we received news that Chinese troops had captured the ring-leaders of the rebels and executed them. It was all very sudden.\n\nAt the end of October we at last received the long-awaited reply from the Chinese government. It was a refusal to issue passes on the grounds that the present time was not considered suitable for the despatch of a small party of British officers to the Sino-Burmese border. Soon after I returned to India and new plans were prepared. In the absence of Chinese co-operation, it was proposed to drop a party by parachute into Kokang, and to obviate the necessity of maintaining them entirely by ...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212829,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1992",
        "page_number": 138,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "123\n\nHeadquarters of the C.E.F. was stationed. The British Assistant Military Attache from Kun-ming went with me to introduce me to the Chief of Staff, from whom we were to receive our passes. The Chief of Staff was not particularly affable. There was some talk of wireless and he stated we would have to supply photographs in duplicate for every member of our party: no easy matter in a small upcountry town in a land which had been closed to foreign imports for many years. However, we were lucky and found a small photographer in the place who still had some film and undertook to produce the required photographs. Next day when these were presented at the Headquarters we were informed that after all they would not be necessary; all that would be required was my own photograph in duplicate, a contingency for which I had been well prepared having armed myself with a dozen before I left India. Even then there was delay in preparing the pass and it was not till late on the afternoon of the second day that I was able to leave. The reason for the various delays became apparent later. The parachute party had reported that the Myosa was held a close prisoner by the Chinese at Tetang. My route lay through Tetang, but when we arrived there we found the Myosa had already been removed further into China. They were evidently anxious I should not meet him and wished to allow sufficient time to get him out of the way. They were holding him for trial on a charge of treasonable relations with the Japanese.\n\nOn arrival at Paoshan we found our parachute party living in the American officers' mess; the Colonel in charge was our old friend from Kun-ming. He went out of his way to make us all feel at home; he found us quarters, he fed us, and he sent our signals for us. After talking the position over with the parachute officers, I decided to send one of them back to report: that left us a party of twelve. Stan, the chief parachutist, was an expert in many lines: Bren gun, Tommy gun, machine guns, he had even taken an armourer's course, an additional accomplishment which turned out most useful. Jack had spent most of his life in Burma; he not only spoke Burmese fluently, but he also spoke Kachin, an important point, as we were to enter country bordering on Kachin land and we were anxious to enlist the co-operation of those doughty tribesmen in our work. They had already acquired a great reputation for their fighting qualities further north. We were three British officers and three Chinese interpreters, one Burmese-Chinese interpreter, two Hong Kong wireless operators, a medical orderly, and Rogue and Lao Teng. The interpreters were all men who had escaped from Hongkong and had registered with the British Relief Organisation maintained at Kweilin to...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
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    {
        "id": 212831,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1992",
        "page_number": 140,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "125\n\nto hold the local headman responsible for the collection of the number required; they were paid for at fixed military rates. Throughout Yunnan commerce in peace time moves by pack saddle. The Yunnan mule is a large strong animal, at one time much in demand for work in Burma; but now the wear and tear of war had created a shortage. We had to wait some days at Paoshan before the necessary number of beasts was produced, and then we only got off because I had carried introductions to some of the local gentry, who willingly came to our assistance.\n\nWe took seven days to reach Shunning, over a series of mountains; the mule track went up and up and up, and down and down and down; it seldom ran level and we seldom covered more than ten miles by the map in a day. In actual ground covered the distance was often double. We arrived at Shunning in time for the Chinese New Year. We had to wait over for the festival, a day on which no one will work, and the general commanding the Army very kindly invited us to a feast prepared for his American allies. Here again we stayed at the American mess and were made most comfortable. From Shunning to Tetang we took five days; mules became scarcer and on several stages bullocks were brought in from the fields to carry our wireless sets and equipment. Pack bullocks move more slowly than mules, but get there eventually. Our chief trouble was in trying to get off sufficiently early in the morning. On arrival at the destination for the day, the headman would be warned how many beasts we would need the next day, and he would promise to have them ready for an early start at 7 o'clock. But there was often difficulty in collecting the requisite number and it might not be till long after midday before we could move off. It was wearing on our patience.\n\nIt was on this stretch that I received further confirmation of the sort of trouble we might expect. At one deserted village, where we stopped for the night, we were joined by a stranger who appeared friendly enough. He was later heard haranguing the Chinese members of our party in Cantonese which he thought we did not understand, asking them why they worked for the foreign British, telling them it was unpatriotic to do so, and threatening them with dire consequences.\n\nI cannot tell the whole of our difficulties, only sufficient to make the story clear; but that much I believe should be told. It is only fair to the British public, particularly at a time when the most important conferences are to be held concerning arrangements for the future peace of the world, to know how their compatriots fare in foreign countries, and how",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212832,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1992",
        "page_number": 141,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "126\n\nforeigners treat them. To misrepresent conditions to the public, by only dwelling on favourable aspects and avoiding unpleasant truths, is, in my opinion, no service to posterity. Unlike many writers about the East, whose main ambition appears to be to disparage the British by retailing every slanderous rumour they can collect, I am only recounting what I saw with my own eyes or heard with my own ears; and as already explained much of that even I cannot recount.\n\nTo finish here with the Hongkong members of our party all except one were thoroughly cowed by the threats to which they were continuously exposed. At a much later date I found that not only had they been compelled to act as spies on us, and to report weekly to the nearest Chinese commander on all our doings, but also they were persuaded to try to break the cypher system we used for our signals. The threats were not confined to themselves, but included their families, left behind in Kweilin. Under such pressure I cannot find it in my heart to blame them. In practice the spying did not worry me, because we had nothing to conceal; but to one who had always stood up for the Chinese cause it came as a most unpleasant surprise. On reflection I can understand the attitude of those zealous supporters of intimidation by Kuo Min Tang doctrine; brought up in an atmosphere of intense suspicion of the foreigner, their behaviour is not unnatural. But what may be excused in a small backward nation, can not be excused in a nation which is preparing to join the ranks of the great powers. Let us hope that the Chinese authorities will realise that this sort of thing will not make for harmony; that it is unworthy of a great people.\n\nWe found another small American detachment at Tetang, attached to the Nth Chinese division, and as at other headquarters mortars, Brens, rifles, such like.\n\nIn addition to missing the Myosa I was to suffer a further disappointment at Tetang. When the news of the attack on the Myosa had reached Kun-ming the Consul General had sent a Hongkong-trained Chinese doctor to attend on him. I met the doctor before he left; he had a fine reputation and amongst other things had been ship's doctor on a Blue Funnel boat for a number of years. I arranged that he should join our party in due course when we arrived in Kokang. But I now found that he too was under arrest and was being detained, in some place undefined, with the Myosa. This left us without a doctor.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212833,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1992",
        "page_number": 142,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "127\n\nAlthough modern methods have reduced the danger of infections in the field, — plague, meningitis, cholera, typhoid, dysentery and small-pox all yield to inoculations or drugs — that still left typhus and the most dangerous disease to us, the deadly cerebral malaria, which lurked in these border valleys. Apart from the hazard of wounds and accidents, to be left without a doctor in such a situation was not too pleasant.\n\nAt Tetang we were provided with an escort by the Nth Division, a Central Government Division, and we were instructed to call on one of their battalion headquarters on this side of the border to surrender our pass. Two days later, on arrival at these headquarters, I called on the colonel. I had already learnt that the main Chinese defence line here was well back from the Salween, not in Burma, but on the Chinese side of the boundary. The Japanese had small posts along the Salween, so that in Kokang we should be between the two forces, with only the Salween to separate us from the enemy. I began to take a close interest in the width of the river and the speed of its current.\n\nThe battalion commander said that he would give us an escort and that the officer in charge of the escort would arrange with the local population for any services we might require in Kokang. One of the chief complaints of our parachute party, when they had been in Kokang in December, was that the escort provided by the Chinese acted to prevent the local inhabitants speaking freely to them; so I now explained to the colonel that in Kokang we would make our own arrangements direct with the natives, but I would, of course, keep him informed of all our movements. In view of our need for further supplies we were anxious to have a 'drop' as soon as possible, and as at the moment the only level place of which we knew was just inside China, where the first parachute party had been dropped, I asked the colonel whether he would have any objection to our receiving it there. He readily agreed and undertook to provide the necessary covering party. It should be remembered that during the next few months we were at no time more than a night's march from the Japanese; but the situation was not as dangerous as it may sound because we could expect to receive at least a few hours' notice of any unusual movement by the enemy.\n\nSo we moved forward of the Chinese defence line into the valley next to Kokang, set up our W/T, and passed signals to arrange for the sortie. We went out to prepare the signal fires, and Stan showed me the clump of cactus thorn near which he had landed; the site of the long thick spikes",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212841,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1992",
        "page_number": 150,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "135 \n\na party in American uniform in Kokang; they stated that the party claimed to be working for the Americans, but that they were more probably spies working for the Japanese. They enquired whether they should be arrested? The American officers concerned were evidently unused to the tortuous complexities of oriental politics, nor had they any means of direct communication with the local population; they were in the hands of their interpreters, who before being provided by the Chinese were put through a conditioning course in Kuo Min Tang ideology. It was thus not at all easy for the American officers to arrive at the facts. So Lopez' party was surrounded early one morning by a company of Chinese troops, arrested and disarmed. Their supplies were all confiscated. Two of Dr. Seagrave's nurses, caught by the war in Kokang, had joined Lopez; one succeeded in hiding in the jungle, but the other was taken. With Lopez the Chinese also arrested twelve natives of Kokang, who had been serving him as cook, coolies, grooms, and so on. The headman's son was one of these twelve. The whole party was removed under guard to Tetang, since when the people of Kokang had heard nothing more of them. For all they knew their twelve men might be dead.\n\nThe men had already been missing for three months when I took up the affair. I wrote to the General Commanding at Tetang, pointed out the circumstances under which the men had been taken, and requested his kind consideration to obtain their release. He replied that he knew nothing of the matter! The Chinese then informed our authorities that the men had been taken to Shunning, tried and released; but they did not arrive back in Kokang, nor could we find out anything about them. Much later one of them, the headman's son, turned up. I sent for him to enquire into his story. He reported that they had been held for a week at Tetang and then imprisoned at Shunning, without trial, and that one morning they had been taken out and compulsorily enlisted in the Chinese army, in the transportation corps — that meant, as coolies. The company to which they were attached, belonging to a unit of the Nth Division, had moved to such and such a place; on the way he had managed to elude the vigilance of the soldiers and escape. Weeks later two more men escaped, but the remainder, for all we know, are still working in the Chinese army.\n\nThe news of the marching out of a party, wearing American uniform, under arrest gave the natives the impression that in Kokang the Chinese were all powerful; the summary disappearance of twelve of their own people showed them what to expect. On a number of occasions they asked\n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151",
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    {
        "id": 212852,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1992",
        "page_number": 161,
        "title": "RAS-1992",
        "content_text": "146\n\nanother. At about this time too I received a signal from Jack, who was doing most useful work across the Salween, that despite our previous agreement the Chinese were refusing to allow his agents to cross, unless they held a pass issued by the Headquarters of the Nth Division at Tetang. That meant a week's delay in each instance, and also it involved making public the names of our agents — the Chinese are not noted for security. So now I made a signal to our Headquarters, and the next I heard was that the Chinese had withdrawn their troops entirely from the ferries in question.\n\nJack himself crossed the river with a small party; but he found he could not proceed far. The Japanese kept a tab on all movement; at uncertain times their men would pass through villages, check the inhabitants and their pack animals. Any discrepancies had to be explained. Moreover, the Kachins were terrified lest the Chinese troops should cross over into their territory. It seemed that in 1942 when the armies retreated from Burma, there were a number of incidents between Chinese troops and Kachins, questions of women, taking food, pack animals, and all those difficulties which do arise on a retreat. The Chinese troops had left a bad reputation. The Kachins had killed some of them and they now feared, should the Chinese return, that they would take vengeance. The situation was difficult and we were unable to develop our plans.\n\nIn April we were joined by an American officer and his radio operator; from the first we had suggested that an American officer should join our party, and we were delighted when he arrived. He went off to join Jack across the Salween for a while. His operator stayed with us and was a great asset to our group. He had led a most interesting life in the States 'following the horses.' We learnt much about American race tracks, American girls, and other things. He would keep the campfire party at night amused for hours on end. At about this time too we ran short of \"imported\" food; things like butter, jam, sugar and tea. During the sorties that month our people had forgotten to include any in the containers, a lapse most unpopular at our end and the subject of lengthy and uncomplimentary comment, after the fashion of soldiers. But our racing expert now produced some American B ration, a large tin of butter, and another of jam, some cheese, some incredibly white caster sugar, such as we had not seen in months, and even a tin of pickles. It was all most welcome.\n\nAs will be imagined we were much dependent on the working of our",
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